Often word misuse is our mistake. The English language is full of homonyms, or words that have different meanings but sound and look similar, which makes it easy to confuse proper usage. For instance, verbally, you might not even notice the difference between “your” and “you’re.” But in print, the error can lead the reader to perceive you as less intelligent than you are. For this reason, it's important to spell check and proofread your documents, especially for the following common misuses, which are so easy to make, you might even have to check your document a couple times to catch them.

Its versus It’s (and all other apostrophes): According to a copy editing instructor for California-based copy editing service provider Edicetera, confusing “its” and “it’s” is the most common error in the English language. That one minuscule apostrophe (or lack thereof) drastically changes the meaning of the entire sentence. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is,” whereas “its” refers to possession. Also, watch out for “your” versus “you’re.”

Sales versus Sails: Can you imagine writing on your resume that you “increased sails by 20 percent”?! Unless you’re applying to a job for a sail boat manufacturer, this careless mistake will probably get your resume sailing right into the recycling bin.

Affect versus Effect: There is a lot of confusion around this one but here’s the rule: “Affect” is a verb and “effect” is a noun. It’s as simple as that.

Would Have NOT Would of: The subtlety in pronunciation leads to the rampant misuse of this phrase; however “would of” is never correct and may make you appear as if you are not well-read.

Through versus Threw: “He threw the ball through the window.” “Threw” is a verb and “through” is a preposition. And speaking of “through,” be careful to make sure you don’t actually mean “thorough” or vice versa. The slight variation in spelling will not be picked up by a computer, but writing “I am through” when you mean “I am thorough” is quite ironic, don’t you think? 

Then versus Than: Six is more than five; after five then comes six. “Than” refers to a comparison, while “then” refers to a subsequent event.

Supposed To NOT Suppose To: “Suppose” is a verb, meaning to think or to ponder. The correct way to express a duty is to write, “I was supposed to…”

Wonder versus Wander: You can wander around while you wonder why “wander” and “wonder” have such different meanings, yet sound oh so similar.

Their versus There versus They’re: OK, once and for all: “Their” is possessive; “there” refers to distance; and “they’re” is a contraction of “they are.”

Farther versus Further: While both words refer to distance, grammarians distinguish “farther” as physical distance and “further” as metaphorical distance. You can dive further into a project, for instance, or you can dive farther into the ocean.

Photographs show a 33-foot southern right whale soaring out of the water off Cape Town, South Africa, and landing on a couple's boat, nearly destroying it. But reports indicate that the 40-ton beast was provoked into the attack -- and local officials are investigating.

The couple, Ralph Mothes and Paloma Werner, posted pictures of the incident on a Facebook  page associated with their company, Cape Town Sailing Academy. 

The couple detailed the incident in a typo-laden post on the social-networking site: 

"While taking some pictures we decided to had back when a southern right whale, between 11 - 14 m long, breach about 100 meters away from us and then suddenly breach about 10 meters from us and then on us. We where sailing had no engine of so we could not even take any action. Scary!"

Mothes said his 32-foot steel boat had held up well, sustaining no structural damage despite the right whale's massive bulk.

Reports suggest that the couple's harassing behavior may have incited the whale, however, leading the local Department of Environmental Affairs to launch an investigation. Several people came forward to say a boater had broken the law by approaching the whale, reported one local news agency.

The couple tells a different story. They point out that because this particular species of whale navigates by sound -- and has poor eyesight -- it may have simply not heard the sailboat.

"Our boat's engine was off and so the whale just didn't know we were there," Paloma Werner told the BBC.

"We were just the wrong boat, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."

Werner and her partner Ralph reportedly first saw the whale in the distance. They floated for an hour watching. "It appeared about 120 meters away from our boat and then it went under the water again," she told the BBC.

"A few moments later, I saw it resurface just 10 meters away. Suddenly I heard my partner shout, and when I looked around, I saw the huge thing breaching onto the deck.

"Instinctively, I took cover as the mast came crashing down. I saw my partner, Ralph, dive for cover behind the yacht's wheel. Then the whale slid down the side of the boat and back into the water."

"As soon as I realized that we were unhurt, we checked to see how much damage had been done.

"Luckily, we weren't taking on water so we started the engine and headed for shore. I saw the whale reappear further away.

"When we got back to land, I realized how lucky we were to have survived."

“A lot of this movie (‘Inception’) was made with solar power,” Leonardo DiCaprio said in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “It’s the first movie I got to do with solar power. I had a conversation about it with Alan Horn, who’s the head of Warner Bros. The generators that we had on the set were all powered by solar energy. It’s going to be a big conversion to do stuff like that every day, not just in making movies but everything in the world.”

Those generators Horn eventually settled on are made by Pure Power Distribution. As I mentioned in my previous post, such a rig not only tracks the position of the sun for optimal efficiency, but also outputs 600 Amps/72,000 watts of “pure sine wave power with no noise, and no emissions”. That’s enough to keep about a ton of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each day – along with the other 40 carcinogens found in diesel exhaust.

“We do a lot of things in the world that are wasteful,” Leo added. “We keep talking about this all the time. Hopefully, fingers crossed, with these small steps, we’ll make that transition on a much larger scale in the future.”

Newsweek recently asked a group of prominent architects to create a vision of L.A. in 2030 -- which is only 20 years from now. The teams that contributed their visions were Michael Maltzan Architecture, cityLAB UCLA and Gensler.

Each addresses a range of issues that include transportation, the workplace, home and recreation. The recurring theme among the three teams is the city's need to rein in L.A.'s famous sprawl and embrace denser urban planning.

"A future Los Angeles ... will alter today's predominant subdivision, tract-home, and automobile monoculture into a more multicultural, multimodal, interconnected, and sustainable modern city," wrote the Maltzan team.

The cityLAB team embraces the big-box retail culture that is prevalent in Southern California and transforms it into something more complex that includes closer ties to local communities. The architects at Gensler are proposing a public transportation system that takes advantage of GPS and other wireless technologies.

Each tab in the interactive feature includes audio and video presentations of renderings and mock-ups of the teams' re-imagined L.A.

The interactive feature also has a section of New York re-envisioned by the firms Richard Meier & Partners; Cooper, Robertson & Partners; and HOK.

Today, our global culture’s insatiable hunger for Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (attributed to 40 years of overfishing) has been responsible for a population decline of 97%, which is hard to imagine given their hefty 1500 pound size. As if our appetite for the highly sought after protein source weren’t enough of a threat to its existence, bluefin tuna typically spawn throughout the spring and summer months in the Gulf of Mexico, which as everyone knows, spells doom for the species now that it is tainted with oil. In fact, scientists estimate that billions upon billions of bluefin larvae were likely in the gulf at the time that the Deepwater Horizon spill first occurred and though they have a strong sense of smell (and can probably detect oil), their Gulf spawning instinct is probably stronger.

Entourage star Adrian Grenier – a longtime proponent of various ecological causes – has just filmed a public service announcement for Oceana entitled Going Fast which sheds light on the plight of bluefin tuna. Citing his refusal to “sit back idly while this amazing predator is being pushed to the brink of extinction”, the 34 year old acknowledges that “fishing bluefin at alarming rates” has resulted in a critical time for them that we must address through real world action.

There is a ray of hope for the fish since the Center For Biological Diversity filed a request for endangered species status back in May, but the process will likely take years of analysis and consideration before a final decision is reached. In the meantime, actors such as Grenier using their high profile status to educate the public on environmental concerns such as this is one step in the right direction. Learn more about what you can personally do to help imperiled marine species such as bluefin tuna via Oceana’s website.